In recent years, pollution has become an increasing problem facing all nations of the world. Among those pollution problems which have increased the most is the problem of water pollution and what to do with the contaminated water.
Heretofore, lagoons and various other water holding areas formed from soil have been used extensively for pollution control and, in order to prevent seepage of the water contained in said water-holding areas, bentonite has been admixed with the soil forming the water-holding areas. Bentonite is normally effective because it swells when in contact with water thereby filling up the voids found in soil. Thus, bentonite, has been a satisfactory solution for containing water which had not been highly contaminated with water-soluble industrial waste; however, when the water is contaminated with such industrial waste the use of bentonite has not per se prevented seepage of water through the soil because most industrial waste will cause the bentonite to disintegrate.
In order to prevent seepage of water contaminated with relatively small amounts of said industrial waste (in the case of calcium chloride as little as 2.3%) it has been proposed to prehydrate the bentonite prior to contact of the contaminated water. This has been relatively satisfactory with water containing very small amounts of such water-soluble industrial waste material but when the water contains any significant amounts of calcium chloride (and more than 4% sodium chloride) seepage still occurs.
Inasmuch as a rather large amount of water contains water-soluble industrial waste compounds it is readily apparent that it is a desideratum in the art to find a method for confining water which is highly contaminated with such water-soluble industrial waste compounds.